MUMBAI: Imtiaz Ali is one of the finest directors of Bollywood. He has made touching and thought provoking films like Jab We Met, Love Aaj kal, Highway, among many others. However there was a time when he also acted in a film on the insistence of his friend Anug Kashyap. The film we are talking about is the controversial film Black Friday. 

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Speaking of how it all transpired, Imtiaz said, “Anurag banana actor chahta tha. I saw a portfolio for the first time when Anurag showed me his. I didn’t know that I would become a director one day and I would see a lot of portfolios but the first portfolio I saw was of Anurag. He has his pictures showing muscles. He came to me because I was a part of the production team of a TV show that was going to be shot at DU. The first person who came to me to ask for a role was Anurag. He was at Hansraj College, I was at Hindu College. He found me in my hostel and showed me his portfolio. I was like this man is so serious about his work that he got so many pictures clicked from every angle.”

He added, “Everybody makes mistakes when they are young. I made the mistake of listening to him. We spent a lot of time together. We lived together in the same building. I wrote the first scene of Black Friday, we used to be really involved in each other’s work. I don’t know what he was thinking when he told me to do the role of Yakub Memon. I think this was his stubbornness, vo merko zaleel karna chahta hoga. He told me, ‘Mein apke liye jaan de sakta hu, aap mere liye role nahi kar sakte .’ He told me with this much emotion only because he is, after all, a struggling actor (laughs). He was acting at that time also.”

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Interestingly Anurag was the one who told him not to cut his hair as he wanted to shoot more scenes with him. Imtiaz never ended cutting his hair after that. He said, “This is why I have long hair nowThis is why I have long hair now.”

Black Friday was Anurag’s second directorial film based on the bestseller Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts,  by Hussain Zaidi.

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Credit-IndianExpress